8 minute read
How Simba SC spokesman has shown heart of a lion in CHANGING ATTITUDES TOWARDS ALBINISM
Images courtesy of Poetic 360
Simba SC fans call Haji Manara ‘De La Boss’ and as the premier league club’s media officer he has been in integral in making the Red Lions one of the best-known teams in East Africa. He also has albinism – a condition that can be a death sentence in Tanzania – but has used his position of prominence to celebrate diversity and spread understanding in the country. Mark Edwards meets him.
Haji Manara has always loved football. He was born into the game. His father is Sunday Manara, the Tanzanian midfielder who gained 43 caps for his country in a decade-long international career and the young Haji loved his globetrotting upbringing while his father played for top-tier club teams in the Netherlands, Austria and the US. “His love for football, made me love football even more because I could see him play and admire him,” he says. “He would travel the whole world with me, and I loved it so much.” Haji also proved to be a skilled player, but there were barriers to his progress that his father never had to endure.
“I remember when I was a young boy in Dar es Salaam, I was taken to join one of the football teams,” he tells me. “One of the teachers there refused to have me, saying I shouldn’t be in the team because of being an albino.”
There are more people with albinism in Tanzania than anywhere else in the world, yet while the government appears sensitive to their plight the country can be an unwelcoming and even dangerous place for those with the condition, which is marked by an absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes. Many of its citizens believe albinos are cursed or have magical power and persecution – which can include murder or mutilation – is common.
Kariakoo kid
Today, Haji is the spokesperson and head of communications for Simba SC – who were crowned this season’s Tanzanian League champions with six games to spare – and attracts a devotion usually reserved for those that take to the pitch on match day. He has experienced prejudice as an albino, but from the time he was a self-confessed “troublesome” young boy growing up in Dar’s rough-edged Kariakoo district, Haji has had the street smarts to deal with it. From childhood as he has done to this day, Haji has met many obstacles stemming from his skin tone head on and won over his detractors, including the teacher who didn’t want him in the school football team, with his abilities.
He says: “Luckily, the other teachers did not side with this guy and when he saw me practicing in the team, he was very shocked to see my prowess in football and the wins I used to get.”
Promising footballer
Haji went on to play in tournaments across the mainland and Zanzibar and was selected for the national under-16 side. That was as far as his playing career took him, but Haji could also talk a good game and his links to football would continue once he left school.
He studied journalism and began his working life as a radio presenter. He hosted shows, including one on Dar flagship station Uhuru FM, on politics as well as football. Haji’s love and understanding of the game, which was clear to listeners, made him an ideal candidate to take the microphone when live broadcast football match commentaries first arrived in Tanzania.
He says: “I was the second person in Tanzania to ever start football commentaries, the first one being Dr Leakey Abdala. I did commentaries for almost all TV and radio stations in Tanzania and I remember I even used to do commentaries on the World Cup, Africa Cup of Nations and the English Premier League.”
Haji was also developing marketing skills – he did the publicity for Tanzania’s ruling political party CCM and was head of marketing and branding for Sportex – which led to him securing the Simba SC post.
The job means a lot to Haji. As a Kariakoo kid he has supported Simba FC since he was a small boy, despite the fact that his father used to play for the team’s arch rivals, Yanga (Young Africans) SC.
Haji is working to build the team’s reach and renown within Tanzania and beyond its borders and says huge progress has already been made.
He says: “I can proudly say that, we are the only club in Tanzania that’s doing very well in East Africa in terms of social media, and communications. I can confidently say that we are top 10 in Africa.
Fan favourite – Haji is loved by Simba supporters
“A lot of international media houses like the BBC in the UK come to us when they want to talk about anything related to football in East Africa.”
Fervent fanbase
Simba SC’s fervent fanbase can be unforgiving of anything less than a victory as the team looks to defend the league title for the third consecutive time this season. While Haji would also love to see blanket victories, he has used his role to spread understanding that sport is unpredictable in nature.
“Simba fans are crazy about their team,” Haji says. “They will do anything for the club. One of the challenges though that we experience is that fans can’t tolerate losing. I saw the need to educate them that there are three types of results: a win, a loss or a tie.”
The fans love of Simba can sometimes manifest in an equally driven dislike of their opponents. But having grown up with a father who played for Yanga and a mother who knew Simba SC’s chairman as “Dad”, Haji is familiar with the banter such rivalry generates and sees little cause for concern.
“In Tanzania we love hard jokes that only we can relate to, we tease each other about football, but at the end of the day, we take it as jokes,” he says. “That’s why my parents were OK being in Yanga and Simba. I also think this increases the love, rather than the hate.
“There is no hate among Tanzanians, we are a very united country. Some fans like bullying online, but it remains online. At the end of the day, we always help each other in many aspects outside football.”
Simba fans certainly love Haji. To them he is ‘De La Boss’ and attracts the kind of screaming adulation normally reserved for the team’s star players. “The love from the fans is so immense that I can’t even have the freedom of taking my kids out because the fans always want pictures, but I take it as a good challenge,” he says.
Haji was brought up in a loving family where his lack of pigmentation mattered not at all. “My parents say nothing about it, even today. I think they see it as normal, as I do,” he says. However, the Simba spokesman is aware the position in life he has reached and the following he has, as an albino, is significant. He intends to use his platform to inspire others.
Haji took home the Best Motivator and Best Influencer awards at the Simba SC prizegiving
Changing perceptions
He says: “I believe through my work with Simba I have helped to change the narrative and people’s thinking by showing that albinos can also do massive projects. We are seen differently now.”
This work to raise awareness has included the launch of the Haji Manara Foundation, which along with tackling stigmatisation of albinos has come up with a low-cost sun protection lotion for melanin-missing albinic skin.
Haji is well aware that he is not fighting this battle alone and credits the Tanzanian government with ushering in a more enlightened view on albinism that he is happy to be a small part of.
He says: “The Government has really taken up measures and awareness to show that albinos are also normal human beings. I am not the main reason for this change.”
In 2007 Haji was made the CCM’s publicity secretary and the following year Tanzania had its first albino member of parliament in Al-Shymaa Kway-Greer. Both were appointed during the tenure of fourth president Jakaya Kikwete in an effort to give a voice to the country’s albino minority.
Haji recalls facing discrimination in his efforts to win the government position. “Some people were against it because of me being an albino so I turned it to my advantage and told people not to vote for me because of my albinism, but because of what I can do for the people. I got the win.”
Simba SC is Haji’s main focus now, but the government still makes use of his talents. His ability to rally fans to pack the National Stadium for matches – this season the Simba vs Yanga derby attracted 58,400, a Tanzanian Premier League record – prompted the government to appoint him as chairman of publicity for the national team.
The league season risked being cut short due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but Haji applauds the decision by President Magufuli that games should continue with social distancing measures in place.
“At first the world didn’t understand the decision that the President was taking, of telling people to carry on with their work, but with caution, but everyone can now see the results.”
The ever-ambitious Haji is not finished with politics and has his sights on a place in the Tanzanian assembly before the year is out. He also has plans to return to education in the new year to get his masters in marketing. He continues to blaze a trail and show that no colour is better than another – unless of course it is the red lion on the badge of Simba SC.
